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Gregory Spears's PAUL'S CASE "A Sublime Start" to the Prototype Festival

Jan. 06, 2014

Gregory Spears's PAUL'S CASE "A Sublime Start" to the Prototype Festival

On January 8, the 2014 PROTOTYPE Festival presented the New York premiere of composer Gregory Spears’s chamber opera, Paul's Case, at the downtown performance space HERE. Writing in the New York Times, Steve Smith commented "All told, the sold-out premiere provided Prototype with a sublime start," while James Jorden, for the New York Observer, called the work a "masterpiece...a perfect marriage of text and music." The production, by Washington DC's UrbanArias, features stage direction by Kevin Newbury and is conducted by UrbanArias' General and Artistic Director Robert Wood. With a libretto by Kathryn Walat and the composer, Paul's Case is based on the Willa Cather short story of the same name with additional texts from Stephen Crane’s poetry collection, “The Black Riders and Other Lines.” Created and co-produced with American Opera Projects, Paul’s Case premiered in April 2013 at UrbanArias in Arlington, VA, also conducted by Robert Wood.

With music that superimposes new and old styles – post-minimal and baroque – Spears explores the defiant and fragile sides of Paul in turn-of-the-century Pittsburgh. Spears shares some insight into his opera:

In Willa Cather’s remarkable 1905 story “Paul’s Case”, an enigmatic high school student — on the cusp of maturity and with no productive outlet for his artistic energies — cultivates the image of a dandy in response to his middle-class Pittsburgh surroundings. Paul’s interaction with his teachers and his journey to New York culminate in a heartbreaking climax…We tried to create an overarching mood that is reflective and expansive, as if the story were being retold in memoriam using Paul’s favorite art forms: music and theater. With recent media accounts of bullying and teenage suicide in the news, we feel that Cather’s tale of a young outcast seems more relevant than ever.

The New York Times' Steve Smith further comments, "Ms. Walat’s libretto turns Cather’s poignant story of alienation and unspoken longing into economical poetry. Mr. Spears’s elegantly spare music, with its gamelan-redolent modes and clockwork repetitions, Baroque vocal fillips, intricately woven ensembles and dramatically placed dissonances, further infuses the tale with a sense of ritual and inevitability."

The Washington Post’s Roger Catlin describes Paul’s Case as “an arresting little piece that communicates its haunting story with clarity and a sense of inevitability.” Subsequent performances at the PROTOTYPE Festival continue on January 9, 11, 12 and 13.

In Feburary, Paul’s Case receives a second 2014 production at the Pittsburgh Opera, with four performances directed by George Cederquist and led by Glenn Lewis.

For more information on Gregory Spears, please visit www.psnymusic.com.

Details and ticketing information for PROTOTYPE Festival can be found at prototypefestival.org.

Visit www.pittsburghopera.org for details on Pittsburgh Opera’s production.

Gregory Spears
Paul’s Case (2013)
an opera in two acts
libretto (Eng) by Gregory Spears and Kathryn Walat, based on the story by Willa Cather
for 2 sopranos, mezzo-soprano, 2 tenors, baritone, bass and ensemble
2cl-hp.pno-str quintet
85’

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